Pregnancy pictures

Well, my friend Danielle took some pictures for me, so you will finally get to see some pregnancy pictures. I am not fond of me in pictures, but she did a great job with what she had to work with;) These were taken about two weeks ago. I feel like my belly has gotten tons bigger since those were taken. Jaycee ended up taking some way cute pictures, though, so I put those in, too.

Blogging slacker!

So, lately I have not had much to blog about. There are a couple of contributing factors to this problem. The first factor is that Jaycee won't really smile for me when I try to take pictures. The second is that we don't really do much out of the ordinary to warrant taking pictures. Our days have all been blogged about before. Another reason is that it is finals week(s) for Lance until May 29th, and that is when we just kick into survival mode and wait until the stress levels go down a bit. The last, and most important reason, is that one of the main reasons I blog is to appease the grandparents, and we are soon on our way to see them. We're looking forward to that so much that it makes it hard to find motivation to endure to the end (so to speak). We're going back to Idaho on the 30th and staying the whole summer until Aug. 19th. Sometimes I think we might be crazy, what with being 8 months pregnant and traveling, and all that goes along with that. Not to mention having the baby there, and figuring out all the insurance and everything. As soon as everything gets figured out and we get settled, I know we'll have a blast. It will be nice to be home with parents and in-laws with a new baby. Anyway, the top picture is showing you when Jaycee will smile for me, which is only for silly pictures. The second is showing you a little tantrum she was throwing, and also her new favorite toy that she can't live without. There isn't an event that goes by in the day that she doesn't ask to take her stroller right along. We'll be getting ready to go to the store, the park, a friend's house, the library, or whatever else and she'll ask if she can take her stroller. The answer is always no, of course (I'm not lugging that thing around). We do let her take the stroller with Mimi when we go on walks in the evening. She begs and begs to go for walks with her stroller. Whenever we go to Abi's house (below), Caleb's house (in birthday blog), or anyone else's house, she will get so excited because there are strollers at their houses, which always end up being fought over.

This picture is to show you the cute girls I babysit every once in a while for Melissa Schmutz, Abi and Kaitlyn. They are really good girls, and Jaycee loves having someone to play with. Look at the cute smiles I got from Abi and Kaitlyn, and then there's Jaycee. The baby's smiling better than she is, but that's the best I could get. Oh well.

What a night!

Last night was not the best night of sleep for Jaycee. She didn't take a Sunday nap, which was hard for mom and dad who like their Sunday naps, and then wouldn't go to bed early either. I put her to bed at 8:00, and she kept getting up and playing with her toys. I got impatient with her and went in there all huffy. When I put her back in bed she bonked her head and cried. Then I decided I would rock her just so she would go to sleep, and she fell asleep in less than a minute. She woke up in the middle of the night to go potty. After going potty and being sent back to bed, she woke up again because her belly growled and she was hungry. I put her in bed with us and told her it was not time to eat. She didn't last very long in our bed before it was time to kick her out. She likes to pat shoulders, or give kisses. Not very cute at 3:00AM. Back to her bedroom she went and I could hear her up and roaming around, but at this point I didn't care. When I went in her room this morning she wasn't in bed, and it took me a minute to realize she was in the closet. She looked quite cozy. When she woke up she told me she was hiding from me so I wouldn't put her back in bed. I'm not complaining because usually she sleeps just fine. It's just that I thought I would be up three or four times a night after the baby came...not before!

5 years, baby!

As the title says, it was five years ago today that we were sealed for time and all eternity in the beautiful Logan Temple. It has gone by so fast, and it seems like time keeps picking up the pace constantly. I find myself wondering on a daily basis how I was able to convince Lance to fall in love with me, but thankfully, it didn't take a ton of persuasion. It all worked out great--now we're stuck with each other, and I couldn't be happier. The sealer who performed our marriage gave us some great advice (most of which has long been forgotten because we were so nervous), but we both remember one thing he said to us. He said that he and his wife had decided never to yell at each other unless the house was on fire. He gave us the challenge to do the same. I can honestly say that we really have never raised our voices at each other (in harsh tones), and we have been blessed because of that. I say "harsh tones" because sometimes Lance has senile moments and can't hear unless I raise my voice. If only I could work on that policy with Jaycee now...but she actually has those senile moments as well, so I'll blame it on that.

Anyway, I just want to say, "I love you, Lance! You are amazing!"

P.S.--Sorry for the quality of the first two pictures. They are pictures of pictures, because I don't have any wedding pictures in my computer.

My baby turned 3!?!?

I never thought she would grow up so fast, but she has. Who can complain, though? She's so fun and full of excitement and life that I would be crazy not to enjoy this stage of her life. She's such a sweetie! For her birthday she said she wanted a Dora cake and a Dora party, so that's what she got. I decided to do a little adventure for the kids at the park we had her party at, and it turned out kinda fun. I didn't want to wear myself out doing all sorts of crazy things, but still ended up being exhausted when it was all over. Lance says it's a good thing that birthdays only come around once a year, but I can't imagine having 4 or 5 birthdays to plan a year. We'll think about that when we get there, I guess.

The Dora adventure started out with Swiper the Fox taking the candles for her birthday cake. They had to go to three places to find the candles, and Lance was their tour guide. He was originally going to be Swiper, but got stage fright when he saw all the parents there. He did a good job being the guide, anyway. Their first stop was Lollipop forest. They got to cut suckers down off the branches of a tree.

This is Jaycee's friend Caleb, and they were so cute just standing there. He's got the cutest laugh, and it's so readily available. He will laugh when I look at him sometimes.

This is the beginning of the second adventure, the Rainbow Tunnel. We just put some picnic tables together and covered it with tablecloths. Some kids were scared to go through, but most of them braved it out.

The last stop was the Balloon Garden, which contained the birthday candles. We stuffed the candles in the balloons, and them blew them up. Then just taped them to knives and forks and stuck them in the ground. Unfortunately, I blew up all the balloons, and was left with no backups. Just our luck that the wind came up, and popped one of the balloons holding a candle. I just stuck it on top of a knife and called it good.

Do you see Jaycee holding her ears? She was quite scared when they started popping the balloons. Good thing we had the older kids to help us out with the popping.

For Jaycee's first two birthdays, I made her a cake, but got scared away when she said she wanted a Dora one. I decided to order one, and I'm really glad I did. Maybe I'll make one next year, though...we'll see. She loved her cake, and was so excited to go pick it up from the store.
I just happened to snap the picture at the right moment. She really wasn't that excited about any of her presents. I just found little dollar store presents for her. She didn't need any more toys, really.

After she took a very needed nap, Andy and Omar (introduced in the previous post) came over and gave her this present. It's a Maltese dog with its own carrier. She has named the dog Tinkerbell, and just had to take her to church today.

A big thanks to everyone who came to Jaycee's birthday party, and to those who gave her presents. She had a great birthday, and enjoyed all the excitement. I have to apologize to the grandparents for not putting pictures up of their presents. Lance's mom sent a whole box full of adorable new clothes to Jaycee, and I actually recorded it. Lance just said that I can't post it on the blog. Jaycee was kind of very unappreciative in the sense that she said, "Ooh, clothes! There's something in the bottom." She proceeded to pull all the clothes out without even looking at them until she got to the bottom and said, "Oh." That was it. Not the best way to react to a present, but it was way funny. The worst part of the video is probably that I was laughing so hard. Oops. We appreciated the clothes, and she really does love them. My mom also bought her some new dresses and shoes (proxied by me, and she supplied the money). It's great having friends and family.

Baseball!!!

On our golden weekend we decided to go to a minor league baseball game in Brewers stadium. One of our friends was giving away free tickets, so why not? The game was the Appleton Timber Rattlers vs. the Peoria Chiefs. The significance of it is that they are the "farm" teams for the Brewers and Cubs, meaning that some of those players someday have the potential to play on those Major League teams. The game was not dull, but not anything like a Brewers game as far as crowd excitement goes. Hence, the reason for showing this picture:


Jaycee was less than thrilled to be watching the game, and finally gave up. It was also past her bedtime, and she had not taken a nap that day. Anyway, Lance and I have disagreed on the final score of the game, but it was either 4 or 5 runs for the Rattlers, and 3 runs for the Chiefs. I still need to look that up to prove that I'm right, but have had a lack of time lately.

Then, on Tuesday night of this past week we decided to go see the Brewers play the Pirates. From left to right in the picture below (minus the baseball players): Brad, Andy, Omar, Jaycee, and Lance. Andy and Omar are friends and fellow classmates with Brad and Lance, and we actually have them over for dinner every Wednesday. Jaycee loves both of them, and they are so sweet to her.


This slide is obviously Jaycee's favorite part of going to the baseball games. She was even given the glasses and a bracelet by Associated Bank, and was thrilled to have some sunglasses.

We got to the game a little early, and went to the right field home run fence to see if we could get a ball from batting practice, but no luck. We even had a few people hollering at the fielder to throw a ball to our little girl. One time the fielder did throw us a ball, but ended up throwing it way short. This is Lance in his element at a baseball game.

The famous Klement's Hot Dog actually came up to us when we were trying to get home run balls. You can see how excited Brad was to see the Hot Dog. This hot dog is actually the one that usually wins the races in the famous sausage race at Miller Park. They have five different kinds of sausages, or whatever they are, and they race from dugout to dugout. When we were there, this guy's record was 6 out of 9 races that he had won. He's a stud! I'm sure it's not that easy to run with a costume like that on.

Another favorite thing to do at a baseball game for Jaycee is to suck her thumb. I am trying to break her of that habit, but have realized it might be a longer process than I thought. That's Omar's Brewers hat she's wearing.

I just had to put this picture in because it's so cute. Austin, Devenee, Drey, and Gabi showed up, but were not there earlier for all our photo ops. I did snap this picture of Drey and Jaycee intently watching the game.
Actually, Jaycee was bumping heads with Drey, and I just caught one with her not being mean.

This is a fake sausage, but Jaycee wanted to give him a hug.

The Brewers played a good game, and came out on top with a win 6-5. We had a great time, and will definitely be there again. Hey, if we can get tickets for $1.00, sometimes it's hard to resist.

30 weeks and counting!

So...I tried to take a picture of myself to post on my blog for hitting 30 weeks, but look way too awkward taking pictures. I immediately deleted them, and will maybe be taking some in a while. I really haven't had anything eventful happen pregnancy-wise since our flight home in March, which is really good news. It just makes for boring updates. I love this stage of pregnancy, though, because when the baby moves, it makes my whole stomach move. It's hard to miss any movements. With this little guy, he can definitely do some cool moves, too. Sometimes I wonder if he's having a seizure in there because it's so fast. I'm pretty sure he's going to be a tough one.

We are almost done with another test week, and then Lance only has one more block of classes to take tests for. Those tests are at the end of May, then we are headed home for the summer. This first year has gone by so fast. It will be so great to be able to say we are M2's next year instead of M1's. It takes me back to high school days and being a Freshman. It's always better to be a Sophomore. Every test week I'm amazed at how much they have to stuff into their brains to cover all the material they have learned about.

Yesterday (Wednesday) we went to this cute park and the girls had so much fun playing. Jaycee went over to the sand and played there the majority of the time. She found some new friends with sand toys and went over to play with/steal those toys. One of the little boys threw a little truck at her (from where I was sitting it looked like a ball) and she came to me sobbing. It was a really sad cry, but I couldn't see where it hit her. I just figured it scared her since she didn't know them. Later on I discovered it had hit her eye, and she has a bruise right on her eyelid. No wonder she cried. She wasn't too traumatized, though, because she went right back and played with them until they left.

Chicago

Over Easter weekend we decided to finally drive down to Chicago. We'd been planning on going there since Christmas, but kept postponing it. It's only a two-hour drive from Milwaukee. For all of you Bear Lakers, we met Hannah Belnap (now Porter is her last name) to hang out with her and her husband. He's going to medical school there, and she's working as a Physician's Assistant. It was good to catch up with them, and they were great hosts. Jaycee started out seeing Chicago by climbing up one of the trees outside Hannah and Brian's apartment. Then Hannah sent us on the blue-line train to downtown Chicago. We've never really gone on a train before, and it was definitely Jaycee's first experience.

We just went and hung out at Millennium Park for a couple hours. This is the famous "Bean" in Chicago. It's so cool how it reflects all the buildings.

This is my attempt to take a picture of our reflection in the "Bean".

This is what you seen when you stand in the middle of it. It's so weird.

These are the face fountains (we never found out if there was an actual name). The people smile at you and just look all innocent, then close their eyes and start spitting water out.

When that sun disappeared behind those buildings it turned very cold, and near the end Jaycee was crying because she was so cold.

Hannah and Brian took us to their favorite pizza place, which was Girodano's. Jaycee tried Hannah's glasses on, and thought she was pretty cool. I should have got Brian in the picture, but didn't for some reason.
This is Jaycee eating the inch-thick layer of cheese. It was such good pizza.

All in all, it was a good trip, but very short. We were glad we had someone to show us around.

P.S. I did a few posts today, so keep going down the page.

Easter at the Zoo!

On Friday, April 10th, we went to the zoo to celebrate Easter with the animals. They had cute little coloring activities, token hunts, and programs--all sorts of fun. Jaycee has a fetish about pushing other kids' strollers, especially Eliza's.

This was so cute when Katelyn and Jaycee were holding hands.

Jaycee had to give the Easter Bunny a hug.

Aren't those the cutest bunny ears? She wore them long enough for me to take a picture.

Thanks everyone who went to the zoo with us. We had a great time!